The last stop we made on Iceland was at Geysir, the geyser that named all other geysers. This geyser doesn’t do too much anymore, it only erupts after an earthquake. Fortunately there are several geysers in that area, with Strokkur the most active. It erupts every 5-8 minutes, so you can just wait for the next eruption. While we were waiting one of the photographers in the group said he had done his homework. He had seen that everybody made a close up of the blue “bubble” just before the eruption. So for the next eruption he planned to do the same.

I hadn’t done my homework, as I didn’t even know I would be going there. But hearing this, I thought: “well, if everybody makes that picture, I’ll try to make something different.” So I changed to my fish-eye lens and decided to capture the geyser in its environment. As we had only 20 minutes, there wasn’t much time to experiment. It had to be good the first time. I took a whole series, from the beginning of the eruption to its end. Fortunately there were some nice clouds in the sky, filling up the frame nicely. From the series it turned out that the beginning of the eruption, with the blue bubble just breaking, was indeed the nicest. But with the wide-angle it still looks very different from most of the other pictures.

Next February I’ll be back at this place. Then in a winter setting and with lots of more time to experiment.